


Speak Revolution

by yhlee (etothey)



Category: Machineries of Empire Series - Yoon Ha Lee
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Gen, Teaching, Yuletide Treat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-21
Updated: 2019-12-21
Packaged: 2021-02-26 07:34:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,485
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21879682
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/etothey/pseuds/yhlee
Summary: Jedao Two's students are not what he expected.  AU diverging post-Revenant Gun/before "Glass Cannon."Thanks to Sonya Taaffe and Karanguni for the beta.
Comments: 23
Kudos: 79
Collections: Yuletide 2019





	Speak Revolution

**Author's Note:**

  * For [jediseagull](https://archiveofourown.org/users/jediseagull/gifts).



Jedao paced back and forth in the classroom. There were no students there; wouldn't be until Hexarch Shuos Mikodez had approved his curriculum and, just as importantly, vetted foxes who could be trusted to keep the secret. Jedao could imagine the interview process:

_Mikodez: "Have you ever watched really shitty dramas about the life and times of Shuos Jedao, Immolation Fox and arch-traitor?"_

_Unlucky Shuos interviewee: "...hasn't everyone? And do shitty Andan documentaries count?"_

Jedao shook his head and rubbed the skin of his left wrist, grimacing. He still hadn't gotten used to wearing a Shuos uniform: not just cadet reds ("shoot-me-now reds," as he and Ruo had called them, back when) but a full instructor's red-and-gold, complete with the eye-in-circle badge. It seemed preposterous, especially since the last thing he remembered was being seventeen years old, barely an adult by heptarchate standards.

Mikodez had received his request for a classroom with his usual infuriating bemusement. "Isn't this jumping the gun?" he said, with no particular emphasis on _gun_.

"I need," Jedao said, "to assess the physical space and its effects on the students." He'd been bullshitting. Now, though, as he walked in the room that Mikodez had inexplicably granted him, he was discovering that the bullshit had some sense to it.

The classroom was spacious, as these things went. The Citadel of Eyes didn't lack for room. Something to do with the whole bizarre variable layout business. The classroom even had an adjoining office where he could talk privately with people if needed, and keep his materials, such as they were.

A large table occupied the center of the classroom, with more or less comfortable chairs, none matching, arrayed around it. (Zehun had explained to him that he didn't rate really great chairs yet. Jedao was too cowed to argue with Zehun about something as trivial as furniture.) Jedao had asked the grid to project several different games and gameboards, from jeng-zai to pattern-stones to war games, and the table was large enough for most of them.

He didn't have slates for the classroom yet, but he assumed that students would bring their own, and he had one himself. In the meantime, he had requisitioned necessities: cabinets, shelves to contain an assortment of physical games and miscellaneous meeples (he liked the goose-shaped ones). He hoped there would be snacks eventually, preferably _not_ selected by the hexarch himself because Mikodez's idea of a snack break was "set everyone up for hyperactivity now and then a blood sugar crash in half an hour," while Jedao much preferred bland barley hardtack. ("That's not even food," Mikodez had said despairingly, "but if you insist...")

Jedao was scrolling through options for wall decor--did he really want a poster of a ninefox that said BIG FOX IS WATCHING YOU, if he wanted to put people at ease?--when the grid chimed. "Hexarch Mikodez wants to speak to you, Instructor Jedao," it said. "Normal priority."

"Normal priority" meant that if he had a crashing need to use the restroom he could do that before answering. Or even if he needed to wrap up whatever the hell he was working on. Since Jedao didn't consider poster-shopping remotely urgent, he said, "Please tell the hexarch I'm available immediately. Where does he want me to meet him?"

"The hexarch will come to you," the grid said, not the answer he'd expected. "Be prepared to receive him in your current location in fourteen minutes."

Jedao fought down a surge of panic. He reviewed the lesson plans that he'd already submitted and wondered what was so urgent that Mikodez needed to talk to him now. Had he forgotten some essential remembrance? Somehow wiped out Mikodez's stock of his favorite candy? (He didn't see how that was possible, considering he only ate candy when Mikodez cajoled him into it, but Mikodez took his sweets _very seriously_.) Kidnapped one of Zehun's cats?

By the time Mikodez showed up, Jedao had regained some measure of control over his heartbeat, mostly by doing some of the deep breathing exercises that a guard had shown him several days ago. He rose and bowed when the doors opened to admit Mikodez and two bodyguards. Both of the bodyguards looked like they could snap Jedao in half using only their pinkies, which was no doubt the intended effect.

"You're the only one who bows that deeply," Mikodez observed, "but I suppose it's an improvement from the full obeisance you used to do."

"I'm sorry I come from the wrong century," Jedao said dryly.

Mikodez folded his arms behind his back and walked the perimeter of the room. "You've done a good job, even if the walls could use some posters."

Jedao suppressed a groan. Maybe he should have ordered one using the random generator, except the laws of irony dictated that the random generator would turn up the most inappropriate thing possible. Like maybe a painting of a fox hunt.

"I _do_ monitor your activities," Mikodez added. "I thought you'd gotten used to that by now?"

"I just assume there's no privacy and go from there," Jedao said. "What did you need, Shuos-zho?"

"You can't produce a curriculum in a vacuum," Mikodez said. He pulled out the most comfortable chair (Jedao knew this from having tested all of them, and he also knew what chairs Mikodez used in his own offices) and settled himself into it, propping his feet up on the table for good measure.

"I've been going through the teacher education modules recommended by the grid and consulting some of the actual instructors on staff," Jedao said, keeping his tone neutral. He didn't want to fuck this up.

"Oh, to be sure. I commend your efforts. But you never know what a lesson plan will do until you're confronted with real students."

 _Uh-oh._ "I was hoping we might wait until after I've implemented changes based on some of the feedback?"

"Certainly." Mikodez's eyes glinted. "But I plan for you to run this by a small, handpicked group of students."

Jedao didn't have to ask what "handpicked" meant in this context: selected by Mikodez himself, not by Jedao. Which, fair enough. He owed Mikodez his service, even if Mikodez's whims were quixotic. "I'm ready."

"Good." Mikodez's teeth showed in an almost friendly smile. "We'll convene here in seven days."

*

Jedao spent the week that Mikodez had given him refining his materials. The only reason he took breaks was that Hemiola would stop by periodically, fooling the security system by means that it was still reticent to tell him about, and they'd watch dramas together. Because Jedao's sense of humor tended toward the bleak lately, he had persuaded it to sit through a particularly dreadful drama about Jedao One. Jedao One, as portrayed in the drama, _loved_ to give soliloquies to the heads of his enemies, which he kept in pickle jars all around the command center of his moth. "Wouldn't people notice and get freaked out?" Jedao had wondered, but Hemiola only blinked a shrug in response.

What he was trying not to do (and failing) was obsessing over the mysterious students. Jedao wasn't religious in the sense of believing in the spirits or gods that some of the heretics did, but he was considering converting if any of them answered his prayer of _please not Shuos Zehun_. Since Kujen's death, Jedao considered Zehun the most terrifying person in the universe.

Brilliant senior cadets from Shuos Academy? That would be embarrassing, considering they'd be _older_ than he was. Even if the New Year Festival was only three weeks off, and he'd be just eighteen years old.

Or maybe Mikodez was going to foist a bunch of actual adult instructors on him, and they'd tear everything apart. This possibility made Jedao feel better, ironically. He would hate to teach people poorly, especially when the topic--ethics--had so much potential to cause damage. He ought to know.

Failing that, maybe he'd have to teach Zehun's _cats_. That would serve him right. Paranoia had overtaken Jedao by this point--it was two nights before the first class--so he ordered and laid in a supply of catnip, squeaky cat toys, and cat treats. _I'm going to look ridiculous pulling these out if there are cats after all,_ Jedao thought, _but at least I'll be a_ prepared _ridiculous._

*

Jedao showed up at the classroom a full hour early, not because he needed to but because he was wearing a path in the carpet of his bedroom pacing. His guards tactfully refrained from commenting on the matter, for which he was grateful. _Don't instructors usually get a student list?_ he thought, fretting. The problem with a monster case of amnesia was that he kept playing catch-up with things that everyone else took for granted.

The minutes ticked by. Jedao hated the fact that he had a constant awareness of passing time, one of the curses of life in the hexarchate. At least with a watch you could refrain from looking at it. The augment, on the other hand, couldn't be escaped so easily.

At last the doors whooshed open. Mikodez sauntered in. The two bodyguards took up their positions to either side of him. Jedao tried not to let on how much they intimidated him today of all days.

"Shuos-zho?" Jedao said, perplexed.

"Congratulations," Mikodez said. "I'm your first student."

 _Ah, shit._ "As you say," Jedao said at his blandest, because stark raving panic rarely _helped_ a situation.

"There will be snacks," Mikodez added. "But you knew that."

Jedao had no appetite, and he hoped Mikodez would be too distracted to make him share Mikodez's latest cookie obsession. To get Mikodez away from the dangerous topic of food, Jedao asked, "Just you?"

"Oh, no." Mikodez's eyes went distant, indicating that he was giving orders over his augment. "Lines One through Three, authorized."

Three images blazed into life as the grid projected the shapes of three new people. Jedao was starting to realize what Mikodez had signed him up for.

The first was a Kel high general. His black-and-gold uniform was so ornate that Jedao wondered how the man didn't jingle when he walked. The general scowled at him, which made Jedao feel more comfortable. He was used to being automatically distrusted.

"I'm High General Kel Brezan," the man said. "You must be the other Jedao."

"Yes, that's correct," Jedao said, careful to use the politest forms of address.

"I'm here on Protector-General Inesser's behalf," Brezan said, "and she enjoys having her time wasted even less than I do, so make it good."

Jedao tipped his head up and smiled out of sheer reflex; Brezan's scowl deepened. _He's afraid of me_ , Jedao realized. Well, that wasn't entirely unreasonable, and maybe he could make use of it.

The second was a Rahal woman in plain gray robes, with a single bronze chain circling her neck. She smiled back at Jedao. "High Magistrate Rahal Zaniin," she said. "I'm here mostly as an observer." 

_I just bet you are,_ Jedao thought. "Much obliged, High Magistrate."

The third--the third Jedao recognized immediately. Even across a thousand thousand nightmares he would have known her, although she'd grown out her hair and this time she wasn't pointing a gun at him. Or shooting him with it, for that matter. 

__

"Kel Cheris," Jedao said, mouth dry. "I wasn't expecting you." 

__

Cheris smiled his own smile back at him, a reminder that she held the memories that had been stripped from Jedao One. "I could hardly," she said, "deny Shuos-zho's request that somebody look for the traps in whatever curriculum you've devised." 

__

"No traps," Jedao said, although he didn't expect her to believe him. Not now, maybe never. "But this is the world you and the high general and Shuos-zho made, if I understand the accounts correctly. You wanted a hexarchate where everyone gets to _choose_ , but we're still a tyranny at our foundations. That has to change." 

__

Cheris's eyes narrowed. All her attention was focused on him. "Go on." 

__

He leaned forward, warming to his subject. "If you raise an animal in a cage, keep it there its entire life, and then open the door--it'll just stay in the cage. You've conditioned it to behave the way you want. That's not choice." 

__

"This is," Mikodez said, "a heretical line of thought." 

__

"Spoken by a traitor hexarch," Jedao retorted. He turned to Cheris. "You wanted to spackle over the problems with the hexarchate by letting people choose whether exotics affected them. Which is all very well. But you ignored the greater problem of whether the regime was worth preserving at all." 

__

Brezan barked a laugh. "I can see why you didn't turn him loose on a bunch of innocent cadets," he said to Mikodez. "This one's bound to start riots." 

__

Jedao elected not to pick a fight with a man who vastly outranked him. _I'm just a fox instructor in a made-up position because Shuos-zho got bored. But I still have to do my best with the job._

__

Instead, Jedao said, "If you're going to offer choice, _offer choice_. From the ground up. You have to overturn the whole framework from the beginning, all the way down to its basic axioms." 

__

Brezan shook his head, still disbelieving, but Cheris's eyes were intent on Jedao. "How long," she said, "have you been thinking about this?" 

__

"Since I came to the Citadel," Jedao said. He straightened his back and met her gaze. "I am a prisoner here. I will never leave this place unless it's destroyed around me. I can't share any of this except as Shuos-zho permits; can't implement anything myself because of my reputation." How had the terrible drama put it? "I'm _Shuos Jedao, Immolation Fox, mass murderer_. No one will listen to my ideas--good or bad--if they know it's me. But you--that's another matter." 

__

"My reputation isn't much better than yours," Cheris remarked. But she nodded once, slightly, and he knew she would hear him out. 

__

"Fine," Mikodez said. "If this is the tack you want to take." He'd been taking notes on his slate, which worried Jedao because Mikodez was surely having this entire meeting recorded for future review. "Let's get started." 

__

"All right," Jedao said. He summoned up the gameboard that he'd prepared earlier. "Let's start by playing a game. These are the rules..." 

__

One game wouldn't change minds, not by itself. But it might open the door to small heresies, and small heresies would lead to larger ones. And he was immortal; he could do this over and over until he got the results he sought. 

__

_Cheris is sympathetic, even if she doesn't want to be. Start there; the rest will follow._

__

Jedao One had attempted to teach revolution in the language of guns. But there were better ways. There had to be. He'd find them, even if it took him a thousand thousand lifetimes. 

__


End file.
